d:
"Honey, you know what it is? It's like that pross you had, remember?
It was on our wedding night, and you'd just got it, and you kept
asking it to tell you limericks."

The Major snapped his fingers. "Knew I'd get it," he glowed. Then
abruptly he scowled again and turned to face Vern and me. "Say--" he
began.

I said weakly: "The boilers."

The Major stared at me, then glanced out the window. "What boilers?"
he demanded. "It's just a thunderstorm. Been building up all day. Now
what about this? Is that thing--"

But Vern was paying him no attention. "Thunderstorm?" he yelled.
"Arthur, you listening? Are the helicopters gone?"

YESYESYES

"Then shove off, Arthur! Shove off!"

The typewriter rattled and slammed madly.

The Major yelled angrily: "Now listen to me, you! I'm asking you a
question!"

But we didn't have to answer, because there was a thrumming and a
throbbing underfoot, and then one of the "clerks, typists" screamed:
"The dock!" She pointed at a porthole. "It's moving!"

* * * * *

Well, we got out of there--barely in time. And then it was up to
Arthur. We had the whole ship to roam around in and there were plenty
of places to hide. They had the whole ship to search. And Arthur was
the whole ship.

Because it was Arthur, all right, brought in and hooked up by Vern,
attained to his greatest dream and ambition. He was skipper of a
superliner, and more than any skipper had ever been--the ship was his
body, as the prosthetic tank had never been; the keel his belly, the
screws his feet, the engines his heart and lungs, and every moving
part that could be hooked into central control his many, many hands.

[Illustration]

Search for us? They were lucky they could move at all! Fire Control
washed them with salt water hoses, directed by Arthur's brain.
Watertight doors, proof against sinking, locked them away from us at
Arthur's whim.

The big bull whistle overhead brayed like a clamoring Gabriel, and the
ship's bells tinkled and clanged. Arthur backed that enormous ship out
of its berth like a racing scull on the Schuylkill. The four giant
screws lashed the water into white foam, and then the thin mud they
sucked up into tan; and the ship backed, swerved, lashed the water,
stopped, and staggered crazily forward.

Arthur brayed at the Statue of Liberty, tooted good-by to Staten
Island, feinted a charge at Sandy Hook and really laid back his ears
and raced once he